WOODY AND HE YEAR 1 WAS 13, MY ONLY friend was a famous man who lived far away, and wrote me letters in plain brown enve- lopes that I told my mother were from “a girl from camp.” Hiding behind the stacks in my school library, I had written to him in desperation, skipping math, | didn’t like math, or couldn't understand, seemed like everything I was a precocious, too sensitive gitl ‘who felt disliked by all, even my family anything else 1 which some days which was hardly impressed by my knack for delivering lines from Antigone ot Bar bara Stanwyck movies when asked to do houschold chores. I escaped into a world Of nineteenth-century novels and 1940s after which I styled my clothing: hhuge thrift-store shoulder pads that stuck ‘out from me like a yoke sharp Mary Astor fedoras that 1 hid behind, This, according to my high-school year book, made me a ““Geek/Freak Coral Gables, Florida, where girls were Dolphin: cette” cheerleaders and go to parties where supposed to want to be bouncy they painted their toenails My classmates plucked the hats from my head and threw them across the hall amused at Halt! Knaves! Infamy! 1 sat my cries of When I was 1 alone every day in a corner of the lunch: room, furtively scribbling my thoughts to ‘my treasured secret sharer on Fifth Ave- nue. He liked me, 1 thought, throwing dark looks at whoever had just flung the peas into the brim of my fedora. He un: derstood (I was sure we must be alike with our red hair and quick-witted eccen. tricity), And he was better then all of them, He'd even diagnosed me as a “gen: That year, I floated along on pride and wonder at the thought of this, at the ex: quisite surprise of my pen pal’s identity His name was Woody Allen, In 1978, Woody was 42. He had made Annie Hall and was at turning point in his career. He was between Diane Keaton and Mia Farrow; he had no children, In the media’s indulgent eye, he was both an auteur and a sex symbol, a hybrid that was equal parts Jean-Luc Godard, Jerry Lewis, and Job. For a nation of women beset by newly sensitive men, Woody, with cringing charisma, had become a genera tional icon, With the great changes over taking his life (he was writing Interiors, his first serious movie), I don’t know how he found the time—and can't say why he hhad the inclination—to respond to that first leter I wrote him. In it—God knows why—I carried on as if we had always other, and told him how un: known ea happy I was, how bored and full of yearn: ing to do something meaningful—whatev- er it might be Dear Nancy Hard to believe you're 13! When 1 was 13 1 couldn't dress myself, and here you write about one of life's deep ‘est philosophical problems, ie, ext tential boredom. I guess it's hard for me ine a 15-yearold quoting any thing but Batman—but 1. Mann!!? Anyway, there’ too much wron the world 10 ever get too relaxed ar happy. The more natural stave, ant better one, think, is one of some anxi ty and tension over man's plight in Next time you write, if you ever do, please lst some of the books you've en Jjoyed and movies, and which masic you've liked, and also the things you lke and have no patience with, And Ime what kind of place Coral Gables is, And what sehool do you go to? What hobbies do you have? How old are your parents and what do they do? Or are ou @ poor family? Do you speak an ‘ther language? What are your moods like? Do you brood much? Are you en: ergetic? Are you un early riser? Are you nto clothes”? Does the relentless sun and humidity of Florida have an effect fon you? At the moment, Lam re,fiming some parts of my next film which have not come out 0 good. Best-—-Wood I was born during a hurricane. Water rushed down the halls of the hospitalnurses screamed, and at my rather dra: matic 13, | ook this to be a cosmic warn: ing to the world of my arrival—or perhaps ‘4 warning to me of the hostile nature of the world. I'm not sure if I told Woody this in any of the many, many letters I sent, (Two letters from you in one day! he once cheerfully exclaimed.) But the young writing student Rain (Juliette Lew- is) in Husbands and Wives was born dur ing a hurricane too. Watching Woody's films, as the years ‘g0 by, I sometimes experience a little jolt Of recognition that makes me wonder if I could possibly have had some lasting ef fect on him, as he so affected me. Since the news of his love affair with Soon-Yi Previn, and the clamor over his breakup with Mia and alleged yen for underage girls, I have listened to all the Woody jokes with discomfort and outrage—be cause I wonder if they are also, somehow con me. I prefer to think they aren't. There is a delicate and dangerous line that can be crossed in a relationship between a ‘man and a young girl; but this side of it seems more a cause for celebration than suspicion. At least, that’s how I feel about ‘Woody and me Dear Nancy Lam finished with my film [nteriors) and at work on a new (this time fury) script (Manhattan). I wanted to suggest that you read some books by S.J. Perel ‘man and somte essays by Robert Bench: ley. Both are very funny, and if you en- joyed my books you'll really like theirs Did you tell me you like jazz music? If $0, Ill recommend some records. Don't forget to listen to Mahler's Fourth Sym 42 NEW YORK/APRIL 5, 1995 record ise you re in love with 40th Symphony? They are phony (hopefully the Bemsici a fine writer. 1 enjoy many of his fictional pieces even more than his nonfiction. Did you read The Wall or The Room? Kierkegaard is the most romantic of the existentialist thinkers Camus is the best writer. Also, might enjoy the films The Lady From Shanghai, Me. and Mrs. Smith, Bomb. shell... 've been reading too much Carl Jung—a psychoanalyst of dubious merit. I'm blue because the Knicks lost dnd basketball season is virtually over ‘Keep in touch Woody A. HE FACE OF SOON-YI PREVIN, IN the famous photo of her hold- ing hands with Woody Allen courtside at a Knicks game, is full of love and awe and ro- mantic expectation, and, | think, a certain magic cast by seerels, and unexpected atten: tion, Her face is full of discovery—a pow erful force, potentially a subversive thing I believe it’s valuable no matter how it's attained, The complex need in girls—and in young women, too—for a guide and teacher is something Woody hasn’t ex plored in his work so much as he has his own delight in playing the teacher. I'l give you your lesson for today,” he tells the Annie Hall-ishly dressed, ador- able girl who plays his niece in Crimes and Misdemeanors. "Your lesson is this: Don't listen to what your schoolteachers ell you' liberating enough messa Listen with the underlying appeal being tome.” He tells this to the niece out movie theater where he often takes her to watch his favorite old movies. In Marthat- fan, there is some wonderfully affection: fate’ banter between Woody's character and Mariel Hemingway's Tracy as he ex plains to her the difference between Ve ronica Lake and Rita Hayworth; watching late-night TV with her, he smiles blissfully when Grand Ilusion comes on, Ubelieve he's trying to convey the irre sistible satisfaction of a relationship in which rediscovery of the things one loves best is possible, the joy of being able to give someone the gift of experiencing, for the first time, great things. (At the end of Manhattan these things become fused with the loved one they are offered to: ‘Why is life worth living?” Woody's char acter, Isaac Davis, asks himself into a tape recorder. “Louis Armstrong .. . Senti mental Education by Flaubert . .. Those incredible apples and pears by Cé. zanne ... Tracy's face.") Rereading Woody's letters, I am touched by his out: pouring of recommendations, his repeti tion of the word enjoy. That he wanted me to enjoy the movies and books he loved fills me with gratitude. I did enjoy them; | still do, once asked Woody whom he would like to have dinner with, if he could choose anyone in history. "Perhaps Jelly Roll Morion,” he replied, “and Zelda Fitzgerald and maybe Babe Ruth and Che khov and Sophocles and Charlotte Ram: pling and Dostoevsky and Tolstoy and Kafka and Proust and Yeats and—oh, | could go on for a long time.” We had ar Fotopage Pte right, Donal Hy.guments, one rather heated one about Scarlett O'Hara, whom 1 idolized all out of proportion and whom he considered unworthy—until I wore him down. “I saw Gone With the Wind (at first) four times in four days,” he wrote. “I was about 17 of 18, [fell in love with Scarlett. She was my dream, She drove me crazy. Then | saw the film years later (I was 30), and | realized what a bitch she was and how I'd grown up regarding my taste in women. Now I'm not so sure. Every day I raced home from schoo! hoping to find one of the brown envelopes in our mailbox. When there wasn't one, | was despondent, and when there was, | felt a thrill | have not since experienced. except perhaps when getting an unexpect ed check. Either way, I would spend the afternoons composing and polishing an- other letter to my mentor. I realize now it was when 1 first fell in love with writing Woody encouraged this in me. I think he saw it happening (he was the inspiration) once telling me that something | wrote read funny.” At the time, I couldn't imagine a greater success than_-making him laugh, MET HIM ONLY ONCE—A DAY THAT lives on in the annals of my ‘most misbegotten moments, It was all wrong. | had lost the feather to my fedora. It was raining, a cold, dark, clammy day, and | and my stepmother (who had brought me along on @ shopping trip to. Manhattan) were trapped in the hospitality of an_ultra— Palm Beach female acquaintance who had recently had a nose job and—like some- thing out of @ Woody Allen movie—could talk of nothing else Thad left him @ note, and 1 my de light—and dread—he had called my hotel ten minutes later asking me over. At the last minute I became panic-stricken at the thought of seeing Woody Allen in person, but the stunned and excited women prod: ded me on. | knew that an epistolary rela tionship is fragile, like those delicate ferns that crumple when touched. My kne shaking, I tottered into his penthouse on a pair of too tall Katharine Hepburn san: dals, with which, because of the cold, 1 had been forced to wear socks. | remember how pale his skin was be hind the trademark glasses, how translu: cent he looked, like a corpse or an angel. When he opened the door, | don’t think he knew which one of us I was. (I was as tall as my two companions, who were both barely 30.) Couldn't he tell? My heart sank. “Sit down!” I remember our Gold Coast acquaintance hissing at me, as she smiled and began to inform Woody of her real-estate-raider husband's financi conquests. We eat at Elaine's, too,” she said. [fell into Woody's sofa wishing I could silence the woman by feigning vertigo. And he—wearing his very same clothes from Annie Hall—sat Indian style in an armchair, much like a 13-year-old, nod: dding politely, trying to catch my eye. 1 scowled. I have noticed that in Woody's films he often repeats a line about having your worst fears realized. It had been my worst fear, at 15, that T would lose this improbable friend, And here it was hap- pening, as if 1 were watching our letters being shredded by wolves. What had I imagined? Something, 1 suppose, very much like the scenario of Manhatian—Woody and | taking in art galleries, talking over books and movies ‘Often discounted in the recent hysteria surrounding adult/child relations are the very real, very romantic. fanci tained by developing girls. Perhaps some- times girls make too much of them; 1 think Woody saw that in me the day we met, He had an enormous tray on his cof fee table, and I remember a gorgeous ar- ray of foods—intensely colored fruits and carefully wrapped candies. It seemed so unlike him, that tray, and yet, in its sump: tuous generosity, it seemed to fit. | never {got to sample a thing. It was time to go, and I looked into his eyes only at the end ing. “Good-bye of our me they said sadly. teenage way, to get over him. But when I went away to prep school, on his recommendation, and then on to-a college that he had also suggested, I finally met people who were more like me. I made friends, And from time io time, when I felt close enough to one, | ‘would tell him or her about my letters to Woody Allen, and how he wrote back, urging me to read Proust and Kierke: gaard, making me feel that | could handle anything, “Your kind of mind and feelings is a prize to have even though you will have to pay a high price for it,” he wrote. 1 never heard from him again -